Home Ownership Begins

Yes, it's finally official! I received The Call this morning with the lock box combination, and the news that the deed had officially recorded.

Oddly enough, I didn't rush right over there. I finished up some things at work, then drove around one of the neighborhood shopping centers and had a cheeseburger value meal at McDonald's. As I drove to the house, I noticed that we can see the ocean from our neighborhood. For some reason, I was nervous.

I got to the house and parked in our carport for the first time. The lockbox didn't open the first time around, but I fiddled with it and figured it out. The key looked like the holy grail. I opened the door, our door, and went on in. I started opening windows to let in the breeze, and walked through each room. Finally, it was completely empty.

Well, almost empty. There were a lot of cleaning supplies in the bathroom, under the sink, and in the laundry room. I suppose that's okay, but the amount of mildew remover in the bathroom made me pause. They left their mildewed shower curtain as evidence of that. They also left a plant in the bathroom which looks like an orchid that has recently bloomed (no flowers left), and I'm sure I'll kill the poor thing before it blooms again....

I also found one inhabitant left in the house, a large cockroach in the bottom of the kitchen trash can. I took both outside and dumped the little guy on the sidewalk. The most disconcerting thing was the uncleaned oven. It's a self-cleaning oven, so not like that takes a lot of work... We had both noticed the dirty oven each time we'd been there, so my suspicions are strong on that one. It's the one thing we didn't check on the walk-through. We certainly turned the oven on, but not the three-hour self cleaning function....

They left food in the fridge, too. About 8 eggs, a loaf of wheat bread, several large hunks of different kinds of cheese (looks like party leftovers) and a lot of fruit. In the freezer they left us eight cans of various types of frozen juices. In the small fridge just for drinks, they left us a fair amount of bottled water, which we were going to buy for the movers anyway, some diet coke, some beer (which we weren't going to buy for the movers) and a bottle of sparkling hard cider.

Then I called my mother, giving her the honor of being the first phone call from the new house. After that, I hung up the two shower curtains I'd purchased at WalMart yesterday. For one of them, the little hooks have palm trees - couldn't resist that island touch....

Next I called a locksmith to re-do the lock. While I was waiting for him, I fooled around with the fireproof safe they left us. I practiced with the door open, but when I shut the door, couldn't open it again. So I gave up on that and went to stick my feet in the pool.

After the locksmith arrived, I started reading the manuals for the appliances. Found out the oven has a "Sabbath" feature you can turn on for those Orthodox Jews who can do no work on the sabbath. It also has a convection oven feature, which is handy (we had that in England), and a slow-cook feature, like a crockpot. It has one of those ceramic cooktops, which we had in Germany, and didn't like it much, but perhaps they've improved in five years.

I also had time to read the manual on the safe and discovered how to open the door after all. You need both a key and the keypad code. It also has a fingerprint device, but I'll just stick with the code... In fact, I had lots of time with that locksmith. It felt like enough time to try out the self-cleaning oven, but finally he was done.

The owners left us a power washer in addition to the lawn mower. We don't have much of a lawn but we do have quite a few plants around the edges of the yard, and will probably hire a little landscape man to do the yard work for us. There's also a beach ball in the side yard. A pool toy!

Our orange tree is overflowing! Our lemon tree is, too. Our lime tree still has flowers (smells like honeysuckle) and little tiny baby limes just starting to grow. We have some rose bushes but the sun is just beating them up. I'm going to ask our future landscape guy (the one I haven't actually found yet) about replacing them with something better suited. I love roses, but those poor bushes look terrible, and that part of the yard has a drip irrigation system, so they're getting watered regularly, but it's just not enough.

Before I left, I petted the neighbors' dogs through the fence. I walked back through the house, turning off fans, closing windows, shutting the door and finally locking it with our new key.

We have this rental unit through the 10th, and our household goods are being delivered on Tuesday the 2nd. So we'll stay here through the weekend and part of next week as we unpack. But by this time next Friday, I guess we'll be at the house for good. Our first house in 9 years. Our only single family house. I even got excited looking at the mailbox today. I've never gotten mail from my own individual mailbox before!

And at least we'll be able to make cheese omelets with toast and juice....